you saw right before christmas, speaker john boehner tried to move his own independent plan to raise taxes on income levels over a million dollars and he wasn't able to do that successfully. and i think it was a big sign about the difficulties he'll have even wrangling the majority of his caucus and so i think in order to get something done, anything done, to make sure that taxes don't increase on middle class americans, to make sure that the spending cuts don't start immediately, a lot of lawmakers are leary of them despite they voted for them two summers ago, they hope to set the infrastructure in place. >> well and good. but intimating here, meredith, who's going to be part of the wrangling? who's the wrangler? last time at least from what it looks like, anyone who talked about this deal, that was on friday when that happened. the president then met with harry reid and talked to john boehner by phone and we have heard harry reid is working on legislation, perhaps mitch mcconnell's involved in this, as well. so when we look at this, david, who's pulling the strings now? who will si